Are there any chances of getting a specific enchantment from an enchanted book while fishing?

Sorry if this was asked recently, or if this seems too dumb or obvious, but I’m really desperate...

Recently, I’ve created an AFK fishing farm in my survival world (1.12.2). It was only meant to be temporary, as my main goal was to get a Fortune II/III enchanted book, so I could put it on a diamond pickaxe and potentially get more diamonds from mining ore blocks.

Problem is, I’ve been AFK fishing for a long time, and I’ve still haven’t gotten one. The fish farm is located in an ocean biome. The fishing rod is enchanted with (Luck of the Sea III + Lure III + Unbreaking III + Mending + Curse of Vanishing).

I’ve actually considered AFKing overnight, except that ALT+TABing out of Minecraft just pauses the game, and considering that my PC is old I don’t want it to cool/heat up...

So I was wondering: what are the odds of getting a specific enchantment from an enchanted book obtained from fishing?

I just use an enchantment table/anvil set up next to a heavy duty mob grinder. (The 0-30 in 2-3 minutes kind of grinder) I put items I want to enchant on the table, see if I am getting an enchantment I want. If not, I will put in a book, see what I get there. Now this grinder gives me an insane amount of free bows, so if no item I want enchanted has something I want, I will expend one level/one lapis to enchant one of those bows with a tier one enchant and toss it - then repeat the process. Once I do see the enchant I want, I quickly xp back to 30 and do it. I can usually hit what I need in minutes.

Parallel to that, I have a big village where I cultivate librarians. (undesirables take a ride to a nearby lava pit). I don't have a Fortune III librarian yet, but I got an Efficiency V, Power IV, Infinity, Mending, etc. Once you got a librarian with needed book, it is just a question of pumping a bunch of carrots/potatoes/rotten flesh/wool/string/paper into villagers for the needed emeralds.

I used an AFK fishing farm for the first time recently in the "1 Tree Island" survival thread. After two long sessions (the longest was 5 hours) it became apparent to me that certain enchantments are easier to get that others. You also get a lot of books with multiple enchanments. My goal was to get a Fortune III for my pickaxe just as you want, and after nearly 80-90 books all i had two with Fortune II on! No Silk Touch and just two Mending. I was knee deep in Luck Of The Sea and Lure enchants lol ... pointless as my rod was enchanted exactly the same as yours! After going on the Wiki, it suggests the rarety of each enchantment is based on the Enchanting Table rules, but with no limits on multiple enchantments on a single book (hence why i got so many!) and the allowance of Treasure only books (e.g Mending, Frost Walker)

Problem is..I haven’t crafted an enchantment table yet, nor do I have any villagers or level-30 enchantment setup (I haven’t been to the Nether yet. And given the fact that I’m on an uncharted island in the middle of the ocean, I have no animals at all, so fishing is my only source of leather for bookshelves, and food as well!) so I’m resorting to AFK fishing for my enchantments, which I put on my tools using anvils.

I have also gotten plenty of enchanted books, most of them containing enchantments such as [Sharpness, (Fire/Blast) Protection, Unbreaking, Flame, Infinity, Power...] but none of them being Fortune. Also a fun fact: I was able to create a (Sharpness V + Unbreaking III + Sweeping Edge III) diamond sword, thanks to the fishing farm.

Nope. The F3 menu labels the biome as « Ocean », so there aren’t any animals nearby. (My world was actually a Customised world, with ocean as the only biome..don’t judge me, I like to challenge myself sometimes...)

I have been doing a lot of AFK fishing recently, so I was able to get leather from it, and so far I have made only 4 bookshelves...Another viable option may be to look for a stronghold library and raid it but I haven’t been to the Nether yet nor did I kill any Endermen...

Still grinding for that Fortune book :/

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Just figured out that when I'd turn 8 years old, the 23th of November 2011, my parents could have offered me Minecraft as a birthday gift. Sigh...

Fun but frustrating platformer. Saves me of boredom when I don't feel like playing Minecraft. Knowledge of 8-bit old-school videogames is optional tho'.

Noting "For each power value of an enchantment type, there is a minimum and maximum modified level that can produce the enchantment at that power. If the modified enchantment level is within the range, then the enchantment will be assigned that power. If the modified level is within two overlapping ranges for the same enchantment type, the higher power value is used."

Assuming I ran the numbers right, ~53-55% of fortune fishing books should be FortuneIII (~47-45% FortuneII).

Thus 0.54*0.0185 >> ~1% of total books caught fishing should have FortuneIII

[This does not account for the possibility of curse of vanishing spoiling a book, fortunately an unlikely (though not vanishing) possibility…]

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WARNING: I have an extemely "grindy" playstyle; YMMV — if this doesn't seem fun to you, mine what you can from it & bin the rest.

Yes. You couldn't imagine my happiness after this. Shame it wasn't a single Fortune III book though, otherwise I wouldn't have spent too many XP levels at my anvil...

I actually tried the ALT+TAB method to go out of the game, while it was still AFK fishing on its own (nobody was right-clicking). I left it for 1-2 hours...and just had the time to do stuff IRL. As I came back I had 44 experience levels, and found those 2 books while browsing my chests. So yeah, I can pretty much say the Minecraft gods blessed me with that one...

Now, I actually made my diamond pickaxe with pretty much the best enchantments out there. Mind if I post another screenshot?

(The name of my pickaxe isn't a typo...I thought it would be easier to let the letter "d" connect between the words "gold" and "digger".)

Thanks for your help, for all the feedback and also sticking with me!

Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack

Just figured out that when I'd turn 8 years old, the 23th of November 2011, my parents could have offered me Minecraft as a birthday gift. Sigh...

Fun but frustrating platformer. Saves me of boredom when I don't feel like playing Minecraft. Knowledge of 8-bit old-school videogames is optional tho'.

If you really want to you can old right click on your mouse then unplug your mouse and it can stay on the right click, personally I have a bad computer myself well its a laptop and I turn down my brightness to its least and turn off any unnecessary programs running in the background, you might wanna work on getting a pickaxe or fishing rod that doesn't actually have curse of vanishing on it as it, well it speaks for itself, it can vanish.

1) There is an F3+p toggle option for switching the game's ALT+TAB pause behaviour on or off. So you can alt-tab away and the game will still continue.

1b) you can use your (I assume single player) world on a local server for yourself (using the server jar), and the game will not be able to pause on the unfocused window either, if you don't want to use the F3 toggle option.

2) If you so have the abilities and resources on your island, you might be able to cure a few zombie villagers to create a villager breeder, and get your enchanted books that way. Although you can find brewing stands for the weakness potion brewing in Igloos, as well as said potions themselves, I understand there are no such structures in your world available to you. But if you can opt for the Nether, this option will become available to you as an alternative.

If you really want to you can old right click on your mouse then unplug your mouse and it can stay on the right click, personally I have a bad computer myself well its a laptop and I turn down my brightness to its least and turn off any unnecessary programs running in the background, you might wanna work on getting a pickaxe or fishing rod that doesn't actually have curse of vanishing on it as it, well it speaks for itself, it can vanish.

I actually am playing on a laptop, so I just hold right-click, and then ALT+TAB out of Minecraft to keep casting the fishing rod while it loses focus. I could still deactivate the touchpad, plug a mouse in, hold right-click and disconnect the mouse to keep casting.

As for the Curse of Vanishing enchantment, I actually didn’t intend my pickaxe/fishing rod to have this enchantment, but since there is no way you can remove a « specific » enchantment from an item I just have to deal with it. :/

1) There is an F3+p toggle option for switching the game's ALT+TAB pause behaviour on or off. So you can alt-tab away and the game will still continue.

1b) you can use your (I assume single player) world on a local server for yourself (using the server jar), and the game will not be able to pause on the unfocused window either, if you don't want to use the F3 toggle option.

2) If you so have the abilities and resources on your island, you might be able to cure a few zombie villagers to create a villager breeder, and get your enchanted books that way. Although you can find brewing stands for the weakness potion brewing in Igloos, as well as said potions themselves, I understand there are no such structures in your world available to you. But if you can opt for the Nether, this option will become available to you as an alternative.

I actually found out about the F3+P thingy while searching up the ability to disable autopausing on lost focus, so that allowed my AFK fish farm to actually be « AFK ».

As for creating the villager breeder, I am just about to go on my first trip to the Nether so I could get the requirements. I still have the elements for the fermented spider eye recipe. As of now, I am currently exploring a mineshaft underneath my island, and I don’t know if I should keep at least one cave spider spawner to make a farm...(at least if I don’t find a spider dungeon...I usually break cave spider spawners everytime I stumble upon them. BTW, sorry for all the off-topic talking right here!)

Noting "For each power value of an enchantment type, there is a minimum and maximum modified level that can produce the enchantment at that power. If the modified enchantment level is within the range, then the enchantment will be assigned that power. If the modified level is within two overlapping ranges for the same enchantment type, the higher power value is used."

Assuming I ran the numbers right, ~53-55% of fortune fishing books should be FortuneIII (~47-45% FortuneII).

Thus 0.54*0.0185 >> ~1% of total books caught fishing should have FortuneIII

[This does not account for the possibility of curse of vanishing spoiling a book, fortunately an unlikely (though not vanishing) possibility…]

Once again, thanks for the help, this time by mentioning you actually « answered » my question!

Off-topic: As of now, I am in a big mining session, proudly carrying my pickaxe with me...I acquired over a stack of diamonds, so I created a set of armor and enchanted it through the anvil using the books I got from my fishing farm. Hopefully it’ll keep me safe from mobs, especially since I am in a one-life difficulty.

Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack

Just figured out that when I'd turn 8 years old, the 23th of November 2011, my parents could have offered me Minecraft as a birthday gift. Sigh...

Fun but frustrating platformer. Saves me of boredom when I don't feel like playing Minecraft. Knowledge of 8-bit old-school videogames is optional tho'.